“If you’re a vendor and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, you want to capture the growth,” he says.
Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research, agrees. “Cisco, Arista, Juniper and those companies that build data center equipment, make no mistake, their resources are directed towards AI first because they want to be part of those big buildouts,” he says. “There’s a lot of money being poured into neoclouds, things like that. They’ve reprioritized the resources based on where market demand is.”
Price hikes, long lead times, sketchy support
The repercussions for companies with traditional data centers include higher prices, long lead times, and perhaps subpar support.
Gartner predicts switch price increases of 15% to 40%, largely the result of resource constraints, and lead times of three to nine months, up from one to two months in mid-2025. Constraints should ease by around the middle of next year, but don’t expect prices to come down.
“Generally speaking, vendors have no consistent track record of reducing prices in these networking markets,” Lerner says.
At the same time, with vendors dedicating scarce engineering talent to AI, they likely won’t invest in significant innovations for non-AI switch families. The same goes for support.
